The invention relates to data management and communications, and particularly to providing access to secure data and communication management tools for an enterprise to a plurality of customers over the Internet which is an insecure communications network. The enterprise described is a telecommunications network, and the tools include management and reporting tools to enable the customers of the telecommunication network to manage and obtain reports and data pertaining to their business on the network.
Computer user interfaces have undergone dramatic changes over the past forty years, evolving from the simple, line-oriented, prompt-response systems of teletypes, to the forms-based interfaces of dumb terminals, to today""s graphics-based, windowing interfaces like Windows 95. The genesis of the modem GUI paradigm in fact dates back some thirty years to work done at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center which pioneered the usage of the WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pointing Devices) interface. The introduction of Apple""s Macintosh computer in 1984 brought the WIMP interface to a growing population of personal computer users. The WIMP""s evolution from research project to universal standard culminated in 1990 with Microsoft""s release of the 3.0 version of Windows. In the many years since its introduction at Xerox PARC, the WIMP interface has been enhanced and refined by decades of human factors engineering, and today""s computer users enjoy the benefits of an interface paradigm that has been highly optimized in terms of efficiency, ease-of-use, and intuitive operation
In 1992, CERN""s Tim Berners-Lee conceived of combining a hypertext browser that interpreted a page description language retrieved from document servers accessible by name over a simple network protocol, and so created the framework for the Worldwide Web (take a look at his original vision document, dated somewhere around 1991 or 1992, at http://www.w3.org.pub/WWW/Summary.html). Shortly afterward, Mark Andreeson (who would later found Netscape) created a GUI-based HTTP browser called Mosaic that set the current standard for browser interface design. Prior to Berners-Lee""s innovation, data resident on the Internet was accessible only via arcane utilities such as FTP, Gopher, and WAIS, making it inaccessible to most people. Hypertext proved to be the perfect medium for navigating, the disparate disclosures of the Internet, and for the first time made Internet-based data accessible to casual computer users.
While this particular application of hypertext was new, hypertext itself had been around for quite some time. The Mosaic interface was in-fact quite similar to interfaces commonly used by on-line help systems and computer-based training (CBT) software. The explosion of websites and Internet users however brought hypertext-based information access to a massively greater audience than ever before, and the web browsing paradigm has proven so usable by novice computer users that many aspects of today""s browser-based interfaces are being incorporated into the design of transaction processing and decision support systems.
Browsers have been developed using the standard interface elements of current GUI environments, but have specialized the ways in which those elements are combined to navigate and view hypertext documents. Browsers provide an environment that tightly and seamlessly integrates multiple unrelated applications and have eliminated many key aspects of the standard GUI desktop metaphor.
The current MCI ServiceView (MSV) product line provides MCI Business Market customers with Windows based client-server applications for customer network management and call usage analysis. These applications include: Perspective, TrafficView, 800 Network Manager, Outbound Network Manager, Fault Manager, Direct Dispatch, Call Window, and System Administration and were built and deployed between 1994 and 1997.
Although the MCI ServiceView PC applications reside on a common platform and use objects to promote common look and feel, there is little cross application interoperability and data sharing. The customer must use the separate applications to gain access to their data. There are additional customer network management applications (e.g.xe2x80x94HyperScope, Call Manager, Portfolio) which are not MSV based and therefore do not share the same PC configuration and communications as the MSV ones.
The Next Generation product suite, also referred to herein as Starbucks, a consolidated Web based network management product to the customer. There are many reasons for providing a web-based solution for these requirements:
User accessxe2x80x94depending on needs, web applications may be made available to anyone with Internet access either internally behind a firewall, or externally to anyone on planet Earth.
Training and supportxe2x80x94a critical part of most application deployment is the plan for training and support. Web-based applications can eliminate much or all of this need since they utilize existing client software which users have already installed and learned how to use.
Platform independencexe2x80x94a well-designed web application should work with most web browsers on whatever hardware and OS platform the user selects. Additional requirements analysis are not needed to specify the supported user environments. The choice is where it belongs: with the user!
Productivityxe2x80x94the development cycle for web applications is shorter than for traditional client-server applications due to improved development environments and the plethora of easy-to-use, high-powered tools.
Availability of toolsxe2x80x94there are a large and rapidly increasing number of tools available at low or sometimes no cost for implementing sophisticated web applications.
Communications problemsxe2x80x94the Achilles heel of many applications has traditionally been their connectivity to the user community. Web-based applications shift the burden of connectivity to the user and the Internet provider using standard hardware and software. These issues are resolved before the web application ever hits the street.
Installation and configurationxe2x80x94the other main problem area for traditional applications has been the initial setup and installation. Again, the web applications avoid this problem by utilizing existing software and facilities.
Minimal client developmentxe2x80x94since the client side of web applications uses off-the-shelf browsers, development is limited to specifying screen layouts and data presentation using a common interface. In many cases, users can design the screens using standard word-processing and web screen design tools.
The main point is that web-based applications allow developers to focus their development on the specific products and services, without wasting development, test, and support energy on other aspects of software delivery.
All external MCI Web sites must obey the Internet Gateway Security Standards enforced by MCI Network Computing Services (NCS, the owners of Infolink which is the network that all our computer systems use). Placing a web site on the Internet and then allowing our customers to use it to access sensitive MCI account information is a very serious proposition. To do this a certain server architecture must be obeyed to ensure systems security.
Below is a summary of the basic architecture that all MSV and other web sites that communicate with customers must obey. In a nutshell, no customer may directly connect from their PC to a web site or web page link running on a midrange, DBMS or warehouse server connected to the MCI Intranet. Every web site link including presentation pages will run on web servers in the demilitarized zone (DMZ), and at the same time these web servers will have no connectivity to any midrange or host server on: the MCI Intranet, except for special proxies and/or relays that use sophisticated and somewhat cumbersome security measures to make specific secure connections to application hosts on the intranet. This architecture model separates all server processing, data storage and legacy connectivity from any web system that directly interacts with a customer in order to insure MCI systems integrity and security.